Loadsmart Mobile

Three apps. Two platforms. One family.

Introduction

Loadsmart is a technology company in the truck logistics business, a highly competitive and traditional market in the US. It was founded in 2014 in New York with a very ambitious proposal: become the best and most advanced freight broker through big data and a superior service model.

The Challenge

In order to offer optimal service for its customers, Loadsmart wanted to distribute a set of mobile apps, for iOS and Android, for carriers and drivers. A third app was built only for employees, but following the same design of the other two.

The products had to be available for as many users as possible, so the interfaces had to account for small or big screens, accomodate different languages, be intuitive and visually appealing. Above all, the experience had to be as simple as possible since the information transmitted is of extreme importance to the smooth flow of internal operations.

The Challenge

Alice is a set of tools that is used throughout all departments of the company, from sales to accounting. Each tool is seen as separate product that shares components and functionalities with others in the platform ecosystem. Designing solutions for the platform requires a holistic perspective of the functions and a special care with the design system.

With the sudden growth of Loadsmart, several products had to be scaled for larger operations while new and smarter solutions designed from scratch and added to the platform.

My Role

In this project I was the responsible for creating the user flow and experience, as well as designing all the interface for both Apple and Google platforms, delivering assets and defining specs of usage. The apps had to follow the guidelines defined for the responsive web version of the same products, while fitting naturally into the environment of each mobile brand.

I worked closely with the mobile team in order to comply with best practices and required conditions, and to put the apps in both stores.

DRIVERS

The Driver App serves as a personal schedule and tracking device that drivers are required to use during the shipment. The app is capable of capturing the truck's location via GPS and, through geofencing, notify all stakeholders when the driver has arrived to the pickup or delivery destinations. As a fallback for low connectivity areas, the driver can manually set the status by tapping the check in/out buttons and record the exact time of arrival.

Assigned shipments appear automatically on the driver's dashboard, which they can navigate and check details. Upon completion of a trip, the user is able to upload relevant documents by snapping a photo and pressing the upload button. The documents are tagged, sorted and remain attached to each underlying shipment.

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LOADS

The Loads App is used by carriers and drivers to browse our available loads. As soon as a new booking is made on the system, the jobs are automatically sent to the best carriers for that job and appear on the app as recommendations. With a few taps, they are able to check the details and accept the jobs.

Filters on the top allow users to sort jobs by proximity to their location and load type – reefer or dry van. The acceptance process simply requires a driver name and telephone, and the accepted job will apear under the 'My Loads' tab. Carriers can also change their preferred regions of operations under the 'Settings' tab.

JARVIS

Jarvis is a light version of the internal system used by operations to keep track of ongoing shipments. Available only for employees, this app lists all the ongoing shipments and allows representatives to follow the progress of their client's loads wherever they are.

The app was built in a record time of 2 weeks, hence the predominant use of Apple's design toolkit. Only the splash screen and minor details were changed to make the design fit into the Loadsmart app family.

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Takeaways

Starting all products from scratch required the mobile and design teams to work closely together for several months. Drivers are users that are spread across the country in remote locations, and constantly busy doing their job or resting. This made research specially difficult to perform, but the success of the product made shipments incredibly easier to follow.

When dealing with valuable assets it may take some time until operations rely 100% on mobile data, but this is an essential step for a scalable service. In this case, redundancies like button tapping and geofencing were extremelly important to reduce uncertainty. Battery usage was also a factor to take in consideration, since we depended on mobiles to be on and tracked in shipments that could last sometimes 2 or 3 days. Removing unnecessary features was key to make consumption as little as possible.

Takeaways

Starting all products from scratch required the mobile and design teams to work closely together for several months. Drivers are users that are spread across the country in remote locations, and constantly busy doing their job or resting. This made research specially difficult to perform, but the success of the product made shipments incredibly easier to follow.

When dealing with valuable assets it may take some time until operations rely 100% on mobile data, but this is an essential step for a scalable service. In this case, redundancies like button tapping and geofencing were extremelly important to reduce uncertainty. Battery usage was also a factor to take in consideration, since we depended on mobiles to be on and tracked in shipments that could last sometimes 2 or 3 days. Removing unnecessary features was key to make consumption as little as possible.